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Is this for real? DuckDuckGo has grown in popularity primarily on its claim: We don't track you. Is this no longer true?
DuckDuckGo now fingerprinting visitors
DuckDuckGo is using the Canvas DOMRect API on their search engine. Canvas is used to make unique geometry measurements on target browsers, and DOMRect API uses rectangles. This can be verified with the CanvasBlocker Firefox add-on by Korbinian Kapsner. DDG has recently been redirecting some website navigations to cute pictures with remarks about their privacy promises. The organization is now seeking to expand their Internet presence. DDG are without question data brokers, and commercial websites that make promises like DDG does will not survive for long if they actually keep them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @05:27PM (6 children)
I'd like to see a response from them. Considering that their main selling points are not tracking users and not bubbling them either. It seems suicidal for them to start tracking people.
That's not to say that they haven't had a change of heart, but I would like to hear from them before assuming that they're using this to track people rather than for a productive reason. These features were not added to browsers for spying on users, that came later as a consequence of being there.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @06:20PM (4 children)
Yeah, it would be an immensely stupid move on DuckDuckGo's part, which is why claims that DuckDuckGo are doing exactly opposite of their raison d'être need to be backed up with evidence. On that front there appears to be no evidence whatsoever, at least not in this anonymous forum post.
TBH the entire post looks more like a shill for another search engine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @09:21PM
Any accusation needs to be backed by evidence on part of the accuser, no matter what their raison d'être happens to be.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday January 11 2019, @02:29AM (2 children)
"""
brianstoner 2019-01-07 15:42:43 UTC #9
Hi, I work for DuckDuckGo and wanted to clarify that We absolutely do NOT doing
any fingerprinting whatsoever. Our privacy policy is very clear on this: ?We
don?t collect or share personal information.? https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
We use a variety of browser API?s to deliver a search experience that is
competitive with Google?s. Many ?fingerprint? protection extensions take a
scorched earth approach, blocking any browser API that could be exploited by a
bad actor.
"""
It's an admission they're using tech that can be associated with being evil.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:22AM (1 child)
Which doesn't make their use evil. For almost every API in the browser, there is a non-evil reason it was provided. If you are going to call everything that has at least one bad use, then you should add all of HTML, let alone CSS and JavaScript, to your list too.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 11 2019, @11:16AM
Do you think that a website that is trying to get you to trust them will achieve that goal using unnecessary suspicious techniques?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @12:08AM
They deny it.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/duckduckgo-browser-fingerprinting/ [techcrunch.com]
https://betanews.com/2019/01/07/duckduckgo-fingerprinting-accusation/ [betanews.com]